Why This Rare Engine Wasn't The Formidable Muscle Car V8 Pontiac Had Hoped

In the late 1960s, Pontiac had a couple of serious V8 engines that ate up a big amount of air, using what the brand called "Ram Air" induction. Later Ram Air V8s used round exhaust port designs, which allowed more airflow than the standard D-shaped ports. However, Pontiac faced a bit of a pickle, as it wanted to also increase the size of the intake ports, thus improving airflow and maximizing power, but it couldn't because the pushrods that operated the intake valves in its Ram Air engines were in the way. That's when it resorted to some shady tactics to get around the problem.

Pontiac caught wind of a Ford design that helped get around the pushrod issue and decided to borrow it without asking, ultimately creating the mythical Ram Air V. But even though the Ford-copied design served its intended purpose, it inadvertently robbed the engine of a large chunk of the performance Pontiac had hoped it would gain with the borrowed tech. It was a problem that engineers couldn't solve before corporate brass pulled the plug on the program. So while Pontiac almost built and sold one of the most formidable engines of the peak muscle car era, the Ram Air V ended up being a disappointment and died before it could ever make it to production.

Pontiac's "Ram Air" name goes all the way back to 1965, and it is still a name that makes classic Pontiacs hugely desirable. It was a dealer-installed performance add-on initially offered for the GTO's 389-cubic-inch V8, which included a metal pan and foam gasket to surround the carburetors' air intake. The foam gasket sealed the gap between the metal pan and the hood, so that only cool outside air entered the intake via the two hood scoops. Ram Air V8s went through three more iterations before Pontiac hit an airflow roadblock after the Ram Air IV. That's where things got tricky.

Pontiac still wanted to increase airflow for its new H.O. and Super Duty engines, but their D-shaped intake ports were limited in size due to the engines' pushrods getting in the way. That's when George DeLorean, the legendary John DeLorean's brother, caught wind of something Ford was doing, so he took a cheeky look and let Pontiac copy Ford's homework.

George DeLorean had a drag racing contract with Ford while he was doing some engine development work for Pontiac. After learning that Ford's engine had a similar design to Pontiac's but made more power, he knew there was a difference worth investigating — Ford's round intake "Tunnel Port" heads. George pulled a few strings with his Ford buddies and got his hands on one of Ford's newfangled cylinder heads. He told his brother John, who famously worked for Pontiac at the time, who then called Pontiac engineers Steve Malone, "Mac" McKellar, Tom Nell, and Bill Klinger, telling them to go check it out.

When they got there, they realized Ford solved the round intake port problem. Rather than shrink the intake port size to fit around the engine's pushrods, the Blue Oval just ran the pushrods straight through the intake ports. Before George had to return the head, Pontiac engineers took pictures and measurements, and even made a mold of it. When they built their own version for the Ram Air V, it they internally named it the Tall Port head.

The Tall Port system initially worked as intended. It let far more air into the cylinders than any Ram Air V8 before. However, karma has a way of punishing unoriginality, and a problem cropped up: There was simply too much air. At just 400 cubic inches, there wasn't enough capacity to handle all of the air, so some of it sat stagnant in the ports, robbing the Ram V of its low-end power. The problem was even worse with the smaller 303-cubic-inch engine. In fact, the Tall Port intake would only work well on massive displacement engines and at high rpms because smaller engines couldn't suck in air fast enough. But by the time Pontiac's engineers planned to make bigger engines to accommodate it, Pontiac killed the program, and the Ram V never made production.

The brand built a couple of hundred 303- and 400-cubic-inch Ram Air V engines, but all of them were developmental and never made it to road cars. The Ram Air V 400 was meant to be the brand's most formidable engine of the classic era, but despite all of the excitement, promise, and engineering spycraft, it was ultimately lost to history.